“Shall I find an inn--well, shall I find shelter for the night?” said he, correcting himself. “Shelter I could give you myself, but I’d rather you’d look for it anywhere else. I told you already why.” “Well, I’m not afraid of your company, and, if you don’t dislike mine, we’ll travel together.” The little girl said something with eagerness in Irish, and then turning to Vyner she took his hand, and said, “Yes, come with us.” And they set out. CHAPTER XIII. THE PROJECT It was on the evening of the second day after Vyner’s departure that Grenfell, never much given to anxieties about others, felt a certain uneasiness, and sauntered down the glen, wondering what might have detained him. He had not gone fully a mile, when he saw in the grey twilight a man approaching; he hailed, and was answered in his friend’s voice, “All right; it is I.” “I was going to start the hue and cry, or whatever may represent that institution here, after you, Vyner. Where have you been all this time?” “As to the where, my friend, it would require a very different tongue from yours and mine to say; Russian and Polish names are nothing in comparison. As to the how I have been, is easier to answer--never better; though with all due gratitude be it said, I have passed my time in rather questionable company.” “At least they recognised the rights of hospitality?” “Arabs themselves were never more punctilious. My host was the grandfather of our little friend the fairy queen, a man of nigh eighty, who had been tried on two capital charges, and ought, I suspect, to have been convicted on both. His friends, to the number of twenty odd, were all Whiteboys, Ribbonmen, or whatever other name includes lawbreakers of the first magnitude; and one, as handsome and frank-featured a young fellow as ever you saw, who accompanied me to the lake side this evening, had made his escape from Castlebar gaol when under sentence of death, and actually went back to the town to witness the execution of his cousins on the following Saturday, it being, as he said, the only mark of affection he was able to show them.” “I make you my compliment, as the French say, on your company. And the women, what were they like?” “I saw but two: an old hag that was brought down special to give an opinion upon me from external traits, and pronounce whether I had the colour of hair or eyes that indicated a tendency to bear witness against my neighbour; the other was a sickly creature, bedridden though in the prime of life, mother of little Katherine.” “But explain how you could have prolonged your stay amongst such people. What were you doing? what were you saying?”